The steady decline of Deepika Padukone’s career post-Piku must be studied because while actors have ups and downs in their careers all the time, I truly believe that Piku was her last great role.

There is not a shred of depth in any of her subsequent roles and performances have been so one-note these last few years that I can’t help but question what I even liked about her in the first place.

Take her role as Alisha Khanna in Gehraiyaan for example. This was such a complex character that provided a clear opportunity to bring forth a wonderful performance from an actress as experienced and well-versed in these types of roles as Deepika…

And this is all we got from her for the full 148-minute runtime.

A more recent example would be her role as Shakti Shetty aka ‘Lady Singham’ in Singham Again. Her portrayal of this character was a cheap imitation of her role in Happy New Year (which was already a knock-off of the highly offensive Meenamma from Chennai Express).

I can already hear what’s coming next: “But about her roles in the SLB movies?” To which I say, “What about them?”

Is Deepika genuinely an impressive versatile actress, or have the different costumes and aesthetics simply tricked you into believing so?

(If Deepika can give us the same three performances depending on the genre of the film, I can use the same meme template three times.)

It is just so disappointing to see an actress who’s almost completed two decades in this industry and once upon a time held such promise be stuck in this rut of doing the same five roles over and over again, while her contemporaries have all moved on to bigger and better things.